The Concert

by Ismail Kadare

  And now I didn’t feel any remorse. I just felt tired.

  The ashtray was full of cigarette ends, like corpses on a battlefield (hers wore red round their heads to show what side they had fought on). This array bore witness to the sequence of events this afternoon: the outburst of anger, the painful explanations, the mutual accusations, her unquenchable tears. If a museum of sadness existed, I'd have taken the ashtray and offered it to the curator,

  I was exhausted, I had a bitter taste in my mouth. All I wanted to do was rest, sleep. I looked doubtfully at the bed — the blanket, the pillow. Did I really think I was going to be able to sleep? I felt like laughing, the idea was so ridiculous.

  The soothing sound of rain wafted in from outside. I absolutely must forget this woman, root her out of my life. But above all I had to repossess this evening — that was my most urgent necessity.

  I had to do all this because the pleasure she gave me was always less than the pain.

  I found myself walking over every square metre of the room we’d both paced round in the course of that senseless afternoon. The overflowing ashtray brought me to a halt. I emptied the cigarette butts into the palm of my hand. They were quite cold now. And such a short time ago they had been so warm, so close to us - to our words, our sighs, our regrets, our sobs.

  I went over to the window, half-opened the shutters and threw the cigarette ends out into the darkness. Like scattering someone’s ashes, I thought. I must forget her. Use all my mental resources to denigrate her, so that when I was finally able to let her image go, it would vanish completely into oblivion, Destroyed.

  I couldn’t help feeling a twinge of regret at this prospect, but I was sure it was the only way. I would soon lie down — I’d noticed

  my most destructive thoughts came to me in that position - and thee Pd begin…Would she hear the sound of the bulldozers, lying in her bed?

  Suddenly I had an idea. What if I put all this on paper? Perhaps, written down, this evening would be expelled from my life more easily? I would give it form in order to kill it more easily.

  Yes, that’s what Pd do.

  The thought of writing soothed me, as it always did, strangely enough, in such circumstances. Like a pilot flying his plane out of a storm, it bore me out of my turbulence into more tranquil skies.

  The charm worked more quickly than I expected. I was soon fast asleep…

  I recognized the South Pole from a long way off. (It was slightly flattened, as Pd learned in my geography lessons in primary school) I could hear the dell thud of hammering. As I got nearer I could see the noise was being produced by three squat little men trying to correct the earth’s axis. To adjust the speed at which it revolved, apparently. Henceforward, days would last thirty-eight hours, eights twenty-two. After much research and many surveys, it had been decided this would be a great improvement. I seemed to have read something to this effect in a paper or magazine.

  I wanted to ask them when the new calendar began, but for some reason I asked quite a different question: “Seeing you’re experts at this sort of thing, I suppose you could remove bits of time?”

  Of course they could, they replied. Child’s play!

  Good Lord! So what had seemed so impossible to me — getting rid of all that sadness — was really quite easy!

  I tried to explain to them that I wanted to lose a day, or rather a particularly painful evening.

  They started to roar with laughter.

  “An evening? Bet we only do things wholesale! Half-centuries, decades, years at the very least, But still,” - they looked at their tools — “perhaps if we used our most delicate equipment we might be able to manage days too…”

  “Where is it?” asked one of them.

  “What?”

  “The day you want to get rid of, if I understand you correctly. You want to remove it, and then close up the gap, is that right?”

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  “So where is it?”

  My God, ! couldn’t remember anything! I was drenched in sweat and my head was in a whirl.

  “Maybe you can remember the year, or the decade?”

  But I couldn’t. I only knew the day itself was sad, mortally sad…

  “What happened in the world that day? What empire was overturned? Was there an earthquake?”

  As I didn’t reply, they looked at one another. Thee they cast their weary eyes around, to where in the distance a maelstrom of fallen empires slowly revoked, together with plinths brought down by earthquakes, the skeletons of the ages. They all whirled around in the darkness, lit up by cold flashes of lightning.

  I still couldn’t remember anything. All that remained was the bitter taste in my mouth. Nothing could remove or lessen that.

  Then I suddenly thought I could see something that reminded me of a dress, floating sadly in the wind.

  “A woman,” I told them. “A woman was there that day…”

  They laughed, but coldly. Then looked at their equipment again.

  “In that case it’s impossible. These instruments aren’t any good for that kind of work."

  “Please! Please deliver me from that evening, and from that woman!” I started to howl…

  … And woke myself up.

  It was the sound of the rain that told me where Î was.

  The hotel Outside, the fallen leaves and the little cigarette corpses, one army distinguished from the other by their red headbands…

  She was there, only a few yards away. She’d be feeling uneasy, because somehow or other she must have sensed that I was trying to bury her.

  * * *

  Meeting followed meeting. What had been written or thought during the night was said there, sometimes so changed that, as he sat down, the person who’d read it out was amazed and told himself: “Good heavens, I thought I’d said something quite different!” Minister D—’s autocritique was due to be heard at a meeting at the ministry of defence. The tank officers, whose case was now the talk of the town, were also asked to be there.

  “I suppose you’re going to speak,” said an officer —’ his badges showed him to be a sapper — who was sitting next to Arian Krasniqi He seemed to have recognized Arian, and was gazing at him with admiration. “Dash it all, if anyone ought to speak, it’s you. Don’t miss the chance of making these scoundrels shake in their shoes! I only wish I were you!”

  Arian smiled mechanically. And what would you do if you were me? he asked the other inwardly. Wave a flag and win another stripe?

  Other people had indirectly given him the same advice. They were openly disappointed to find him so reserved. They were no doubt saying to themselves, “What a drip! He’s not up to the situation!”

  These others were in a state of permanent euphoria. They were firmly expecting to take the places of those about to be ousted, and could scarcely conceal their delight when they saw that the latter included some enemy with whom they had a score to settle, whether because of personal rivalry, or a grudge, or - this was very frequent — some trouble over a woman.

  Despite their efforts to mask it with slogans or other empty phrases, their hostility was so obvious that at one meeting the person delivering his autocritique, taken aback by his interrogator’s spite and well aware of the real reason for it, ignored his questions and shouted wildly: “It wasn’t my fault at all! It was hers, Margarita’s, because she told me she loved me!”

  “What do you mean - Margarita?” the other yelled back. “We’re talking about matters of importance here, matters of principle! And you go picking petals off a daisy!…”

  “Could I help it if she wouldn’t marry you?…”

  The chairman of the meeting then intervened to say that either the man in the dock had gone out of his mind, or else, as people in his position often did, he was pretending to have done so to try to avoid receiving his just deserts.

  Sometimes at other meetings, still more embarrassing and unanswerable questions were asked, such as, “Why did you trample underfoot the bl
ood of the martyrs?”

  Arian found all this utterly pathetic. Once or twice he felt like playing the hero, but he easily resisted the temptation. “You don’t look in a very good temper,” someone said to him one day. “Have you got something on your mind?” “Do you think Î like what’s going on?” he answered. “What do you mean: the exposing of all these dirty tricks?” “That and all the rest.” “It all depends on the way you look at things.”

  This was on the day Arian found out that Ana’s name had been mentioned at one of the meetings. He could have borne any accusation against himself better than an aspersion on his dead sister. He was almost blind with fury. But his anger was followed by bitterness. Would these people stop at nothing, digging up that name,bringing it back from the void to scatter it over the pages of their sordid confessions?

  The mere thought of it filled him with disgust. Those responsible were probably here in this very room, perhaps they’d just delivered their autocritiques, perhaps they were going to take the stand again. If he’d wanted to, he could quite easily have found out their names, but he refused to do so. He knew that if he did, and then came up against one of them, it would be difficult to remain impartial And at a meeting like this, where people’s fates were at stake, and heads were in danger of rolling, he simply must remain unprejudiced.

  The silence in the room grew deeper and deeper as minister D—’s autocritique proceeded. By the time it was over, his voice had almost faded away, and his eyes seemed to have sunk right into his head.

  “Any questions?” asked the army officer who was chairing the meeting.

  A lot of hands shot up. The minister answered their queries wearily. After about a quarter of an hour, someone mentioned “the affair of the tanks”. Arian’s neighbour clutched at his arm.

  The minister was saying, “Of course, it was a bad mistake …The more you examine it the worse…”

  “Are any of the tank officers here?” asked the chairman. “Many of us would like to hear from one of them,”

  People started to crane their necks and whisper.

  “Stand up,” whispered Arian’s neighbour. “What are you waiting for?”

  “Is Arian Krasniqi here?” asked the chairman.

  Someone said he was.

  “Stand up, kid, and throw a scare into them!” his neighbour hissed in his ear.

  Arian was in a daze. Afterwards, looking back, he couldn’t remember how he got from his seat to the rostrum. He sometimes thought he must have floated there in a trance.

  “Well, Kraseiqi,” said the chairman, “tell us something about this affair of the tanks. You were there when the order arrived, weren’t you?”

  Arian nodded, and suddenly, more clearly than ever before, the famous afternoon came back to him - the afternoon when his whole life almost snapped in two: the tanks lined up on the plain, their turrets glistening in the rain, the muzzles of the guns like blind eyes. It all came back so vividly he wouldn’t have been surprised to feel the rain falling on his shoulders. He started to speak, not focusing his eyes on anything inparticular as if he was afraid any distraction might make him lose that inner vision on which the truth, and his honour, depended.

  Four days after Suva’s return, the rest of the team from the ministry came back to Tirana.

  In Suva’s office, she and Linda swapped news for more than half an hour with the boss and Arian, who had come in that day with his sister. The weather was dull, so they’d switched the lights on, and this, together with their lively conversation, created a cheerful atmosphere.

  The recent arrivals had had new stories to tell about the Chinese. Silva asked what was happening about the blast furnace, and was told that in two or three days’ time it was going to be unblocked by means of an explosion — that was the only solution.

  “I believe the person in charge is a friend of yours, isn’t he?” said the boss, turning to Silva.

  Silva thought she saw Linda avert her eyes on hearing this veiled reference to Besnik Strega’s younger brother, as she had when Silva first told her about the projected explosion, (She had even blushed a little,) After a week’s absence, Silva had noticed a change. Desks, filing cabinets, curtains, telephone - all were just as before. But even though it wasn’t visible, the difference was unmistakably there. For a moment it seemed to Silva that she caught a glimpse of it in Lindaus eyes, which were more beautiful now, even though they wouldn’t meet her own.

  “And what about here?’ asked the boss. “Anything new here? We heard there was something, but it was all very vague…”

  The other two relayed what people were saying about expulsions from the Party and the sacking of ministers. Every time a name was mentioned, the boss tut-tutted and said, “Dear me! Jolly good!” Then, as if to himself: “Well I never, all these plenums! What a turn-up for the book, eh?”

  Scarcely twelve hours after the end of the plenum of the Central Committee, the names of those who had been expelled were announced. For the first time the words “putsch” and “putschist” were used as well as “sabotage” and “saboteur”. The people concerned were said to have been put under house arrest. Some rumours had it that three or four had even been arrested as they came out of the last session, and that when they collected their overcoats from the cloakroom their epaulettes and stripes had already been ripped off.

  Everyone now linked these events with the deterioration of relations with China. Some went so far as to hint that although he had been literally reduced to ashes a long time ago, Zhou Enlai had given the conspirators their instructions by means of a tape recording. Most people, however, thought the plot was a domestic matter and that Zhou Enlai’s exhortations were merely ideological That seemed more probable: the Chinese certainly wanted a change in the Albanian Party line, as someone had said at an important high-level meeting, bet it wasn’t in their interests to overthrow the Albanian régime altogether.

  One morning at the office, Silva looked out of the window and saw another crowd of Chinese in Government Square. Just as she’d done a few months before, she called to the others to come and see.

  Next day, as if the crowd of Chinese in the square had been a sign, all the newspapers published the Peking government’s announcement that China was cutting off all aid to Albania and recalling all its experts.

  Brief group meetings were called for nine o’clock, where everyone was informed of the gist of the Chinese declaration and of Albania’s reply. In the middle of the morning, everyone went down to the cafeteria as usual It was hard to believe they’d heard about the Chinese note only this morning. It seemed quite stale already, as if it had been sent months ago, even as if it had existed for ever.

  Silva could scarcely help laughing when she thought of what Skender Bermema had said. She’d met him by chance near the National Theatre, and they’d walked together as far as the Street of the Barricades, He’d told her that the Chinese note had been accompanied by all kinds of weird documents, including an X-ray of a foot, which might have been the one Silva had mentioned to him some time ago.

  “Of course/. he said, “it may be apocryphal — that sort of thing always flourishes in situations like the one we’re in now. But if they ever publish a white paper on Sino-Albanian relations in the past few years, they couldn’t find a more appropriate symbol to put on the cover than that Chink’s foot!”

  Silva started to smile as she thought once again about Skënder’s suggestion, but her laughter died away on her lips. She’d just caught sight of Linda and Besnik Struga on the other side of the street. She stared incredulously. Bet yes, it really was them — it was even pretty obvious that they hadn’t met by chance. He had his hands in his pockets, and she was skipping along lightly by his side. She was smiling, too, but that was no ordinary smile: it radiated out over the world in general, and was clearly rooted in her whole being…Ah, thought Silva, now I see why she didn’t want to meet my eye.

  The other two didn’t see her, and she felt a moment’s resentment as they disap
peared along the street. But she soon realized that the feeling wasn’t directed against either of them. In fact, after a little, their being together seemed quite natural. They’d probably been seeing each other while she was away, and it was quite understandable that Linda hadn’t said anything about it. It would be mean not to see their point of view, especially as both of them would probably confide in her eventually, if they really…No, her sadness was because of Ana: because Ana wasn’t here any more, couldn’t walk lightly along the street as she used to do, and yet something of her…But was that possible? Could Linda, who had never met Ana, be acting like her in some way, as if under some influence from another world?… Perhaps, after all, that was why Besnik…

  Silva quickened her pace to try to control her emotion.

  “Mother,” Brikeea whispered as she went in, “Aunt Hasiyé’s here.” As she took off her coat, Silva saw signs of panic in her daughter’s face, but pretended not to notice. She’d told Brikena so often not to lose her head if a visitor turned up while she was alone in the apartment. As she’d told her the last time: it wasn’t as difficult as all that to give whoever it was a cup of coffee and make conversation for a while. But Brikena must have got Mustered again,

  “What are you looking at me like that for?” said Silva. “It’s nothing out of the way for Aunt Hasiyé to drop in!”

  “But, Mother, she started talking like…like the last time…”

  “Oh, Brikena, you know she’s a bit strange ie the head now,” said Silva with a touch of annoyance. “People of her age can’t always remember…”